Sometimes the scale doesn’t move even though you think you’re doing all the “right” diet things. You may have the best intentions, but doing things the wrong way can sabotage your weight loss success.
Weight reduction is a struggle for millions of people all over the world. It’s one of the most challenging things to do, and so many roadblocks pop up constantly to slow down success.
Doing things that matter and knowing the terrain is the key to successfully achieving your desired results.
Let’s talk about the seven most common roadblocks to successful weight reduction. Think of your weight reduction as a journey, a road trip. If you know where construction and other blocks on the road are, you can easily reach your destination with as few roadblocks as possible.
1. Too much focus on the scale
Weighing yourself every day and obsessing over the numbers is one of the easiest ways to sabotage your weight loss success.
Your weight can fluctuate by the day. And there are a couple of reasons why.
Maybe you are retaining water – you may have eaten something with a little too much salt. Or medication could be causing water retention.
If you’ve been working out, you may be gaining muscle that will burn fat in the long term but may add a couple of pounds immediately.
The numbers on the scale can be your biggest motivator. But they can also be your biggest demotivator.
Weighing yourself every two weeks or even once a month is better.
Instead of focussing on the number, focus on how you feel both inside and out. Are you feeling more energetic? Great! Are your clothes feeling looser? Awesome. That’s a success!
2. Eating too much or too little
Yes, that’s right, I said eating too much or too little.
To lose one pound a week, you have to take in 500 fewer calories a day than you expend. You may be overeating and exercising a lot, but you probably are not burning off those excess calories unless you are exercising at a competitive level.
Likewise, if you are eating under 1200 calories a day, your body may instinctively hold onto weight because it may go into starvation mode and hold onto weight.
3. Eating the wrong things
The same goes for calories in food. A 200 calorie chocolate bar will be very different nutritionally from 200 calories of broccoli. Your body will process each of these items differently.
The fibre in broccoli helps you feel full faster, is nutritionally better for you and contains fibre. Fibre is essential to your health and well being. And most importantly, it takes longer for your body to process fibre-rich foods, so you don’t feel hungry so soon.
That chocolate bar, on the other hand, is full of sugar. And too much sugar will spike your insulin levels, causing your body to store fat. And your body processes sugar as fast as a match can start gasoline to burn.
If you are looking at your weight reduction as a long term goal that is more sustainable, practice the 80/20 rule. Eat clean 80% of the time and indulge in those sweet treats 20% of the time.
The 80/20 rule will help you eventually reach your goal because you:
- will allow yourself the occasional treat so you don’t feel deprived and give up – remember the diet cycle on the home page of this website, and
- won’t sabotage your weight loss efforts by overindulging in the things that keep you from shedding that extra weight.
4. An unbalanced exercise program
Are you only spending time on the treadmill or walking? Or are you only doing resistance training – those machines at the gym, for example? How about stretching or warming up?
As the balance of food choices is essential, so is balance in working out. Warming up and stretching can keep you from hurting yourself. Cardio is excellent for your heart health, and it burns fat. But resistance training increases your strength and helps burn lean muscle mass. And that lean muscle will help you burn calories all the time.
Again, balance is essential.
5. Not Handling Stress
Your adrenal glands release cortisol and adrenaline in stressful situations.
These hormones cause your body to release glucose (your primary energy source) into your bloodstream to reach the stress to deal with the problem – think of the flight or fight response.
This response can lead to craving sweets, leading to insulin spikes and weight gain, especially since most daily stress does not cause us to move physically.
6. Not getting enough sleep
Are you getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night? Or are you getting by on five or six? Some people pride themselves on managing on to little sleep.
But did you know that getting seven or eight hours of shut-eye can help you shed some pounds? It’s true! Glamour Magazine conducted a study that asked seven women to get at least seven hours of sleep each night for ten weeks. At the end of the ten weeks, all but one of the women lost weight. Number seven’s job prevented her from getting those hours of sleep a few nights each week, but even she had some success by losing some inches off her body.
Here are some of the ways that not getting enough sleep can sabotage your weight reduction efforts:
Tiredness:
- late afternoon desire for sweet treats to perk you up
- high sugar coffee drinks in the morning
- feeling too tired to eat breakfast (the most important meal of the day)
- takeout or making a restaurant reservation for dinner feels easier instead of preparing a healthy meal
When you’re tired, you don’t make the best decisions. You may go for what’s easy instead of what may take a bit more work.
Body Processes
Your body doesn’t process insulin properly, so it doesn’t process starches, sugar and other food the way it should, storing it as fat.
7. Not checking with your doctor
There may be an underlying medical condition that could be causing you to hold onto extra weight that no amount of dieting or exercise can help.
I always suggest that clients have a physical before starting a hypnosis reduction program.
Most times, there may not be anything there, but at least it will get you started on a level playing field.
In Conclusion
If you’re going on vacation, you want to get to your destination without sitting in traffic for hours and hours. So you do your best to research road conditions to choose the best route. Google maps can make this easy these days.
So let this blog post be your map to successfully achieving your weight reduction goal. And if I can help you get there, I’d love to have a conversation with you.